As was widely reported last week, the Comet Tavern has closed. Michelle Smith, aka Mamma Casserole, who books acts for the venue, said via Facebook that the “owner secretly removed the sound system and other items of value from the venue. So it looks like we are kaput unless another owner decides to lease the place from the building owner and maintain it as The Comet Tavern.” The closure stems from what Smith called “a water bill/lease issue” and, according to an auto-reply email, said that owner Brian Balodis, who bought the Comet in 2007, is “looking into (a) partnership” to resume business at the club.
After contacting Smith for a comment this morning, she confirmed the venue will remained closed. “Well, looks like The Comet will be close[d] indefinitely,” she said in an email. “However I am booking/moving currently booked shows at other venues, Lofi and Waids, the Rendezvous, the Highline…”
One of those shows is a benefit for Comet employes who have unexpectedly lost their jobs. That show happens tomorrow (10/9) at Highline Bar with Smashie Smashie, Skullbot, and SEMINARS on the bill. We’ve got another call out to Smith for more information, so we’ll keep you posted as we find out more about the closing, but one can’t help thinking, given the current climate of condo-zation on Captiol Hill, what will become of the beloved, now shuttered venue.
In yet more club closing/urban renewal news, according to CHS Seattle, The Electric Tea Garden will “be shutting down…later this month.” ETG’s Bruce Mason, who owns the after-hours dance club, told the blog in an email: “Even with all of our social success and mad patron love our profits have never been that good. Its always been a labor of love. Every month of the last 18 years. We can’t look for needed investment when we don’t have a lease in the future. And the apartments across the way? They will never be accepting of what we have been. The owner of that complex has ‘warned’ me before about our ‘raves’ in the past. Lol. Classic gentrification . It is sad. But it was time.”
We’ve got a message out to Mason for more information, and will keep you updated as to the last, official day of the club when we know what it is.
In other good news, Eric Anderson’s Cataldo dropped the above teaser video hinting that their fourth LP will issue sometime next year. From the sound of the music in the background—something like a Lucas Field-Macklemore mash up—the new album will be more soul-based than the tender, restrained folk the project has put out so far.
More good news, there’s lots of good tunes to check out these days: La Luz’s It’s Alive is streaming right now on Spin; the album drops a week from today. Same day, the always-lovely Shannon Stephens plans to drop her new EP, Something Good, and singer-songwriter Barton Carroll will release his new LP, Avery County, I’m Bound to You. Carroll plays with The Tripwires and Wayfinders this Friday at Conor Byrne, and Stephens performs next Friday (10/18) at the Fremont Abbey with Pretty Broken Things and Naomi Wachira.
